[B-Greek] John 3:13

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Feb 27 05:53:14 EST 2009


On Feb 27, 2009, at 12:10 AM, timothy mcmahon wrote:

>
> I know this sounds weird, but I run into all sorts of things.
>
> John 3:13 (Majority Text): OUDEIS ANABEBHKEN... EI MH hO EK TOU  
> OURANOU KATABAS hO hUIOs TOU ANQRWPOU hO WN EN TW OURANW
>
> I guy I'm blogging with has a theological agenda which he wishes to  
> facilitate by taking hO WN EN TW OURANW as referring to ANQRWPOU  
> rather than to hUIOs. I explained to him the notion of case concord,  
> but he came back with the Nominative of Appellation, citing  
> Revelation 1:4, APO QEOU hO WN.
>
> Other than simple common sense, is there a solid reason to reject  
> this in favor of understanding hO WN as referring to hUIOs?

A solid reason? No. I can readily imagine some fanciful compounded  
propositions such as that (1) the same author composed both the gospel  
of John and the book of Revelation, and (2) as Henry James in his  
earlier years wrote a simpler and more instantly intelligible English  
style (Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller), in his later years he  
developed a much more complex, audaciously opaque style (The  
Ambassadors, The Beast in the Jungle), so the author of John's gospel  
experimented in his later years with phrases that are intelligible as  
they are bizarre, such as APO hO WN KAI hO HN KAI hO ERCOMENOS. On the  
other hand it is a commonly-held observation that the author of  
Revelation was (a) not identical with the author of the gospel, and  
(b) is notorious for employing solecisms -- expressions significantly  
deviating from what seems to be standard Hellenistic Greek usage. Some  
hold, however, to a variant view: the author of Revelation knew very  
well that he was deviating from standard Hellenistic Greek usage and  
did it deliberately for its striking effect on the reader/listener. My  
own (more sober?) judgment is that we ought to understand the syntax  
of John 3:13 in terms of the standard rather than of the exceptional  
Hellenistic usage.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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